White Magic

We got our first snow recently and I was reminded how lovely snow can be by Oliver's pure joy at the sight. We happened to be visiting Kevin's family at the time, so our first order of business was to take a walk down the center of the Northwoods Road, making first tracks. You can do that on the Northwoods Road, cause there ain't much traffic. It was quiet, the trees were coated and I looked around seeing the snowfall from Oliver's amazed point of view.

Now we've had several snowfalls and have about a foot of fluff in the yard and Oliver pitches a fit whenever he can't get out into it. I look at the yard and think ... we never picked the brussel sprouts ... I really should have prumed those rose bushes ... I wish we had pulled up all the vegetable plants.

But in a way, the snow is like sweeping the toys under the couch. Everything's clean, and neatly blanketed by snow. Magic.

Sunny Day

Cedars and shadows

We went for a walk by the lake this past weekend. It was a gorgeous day - cold, but sunny. It was interesting to see the bay in the fall wthile the beach and playground were empty. Oliver enjoyed exploring the fallen leaves and walking down the steps to the water. Won't be long til this is all under snowcover, so I'm glad we got out in the fall air.

St. Albans Bay

Steps under water

Harvest

One sunny afternoon recently we dug up the last of the carrots and beets. We had quite a good crop of carrots, as usual. I guess our soil conditions are right for them, as they seem to do well even though I'm terrible about thinning them. Oliver was fascinated --- at least for a minute --- with the dig-up. The beets did well this year, too, and we got a basketful of them even though I'd picked and eaten from the single row most of the summer. Just goes to show what a few seeds can bring you. I love the lessons like that in the garden. It's one of few places where I can truly see the fruits of my labors.

Unexpected Pleasures

It's supposed to hit 70 today and I don't mind a bit. It goes without saying that 70 at the end of October isn't the norm, but I'll take it. It seems as thought it's been cold and rainy this month and I've heard the word snow in the forecast a couple of times, so a brief reprieve is in order. I know it won't be long before there's snow on the ground, and I have this feeling that this winter is going to be a doozy.

As we were starting to clean out the garden last weekend, I came across this lettuce that I'd let go to seed and stay in the garden all summer. I'm now glad that I did as it continued to provide some really lovely greenery in the garden right up through these recent frosts. The leaves are quite tall, better than knee high, and the green-purple combination is eye-popping. Sometimes it's the unplanned, unforeseen things that make me happiest.

October





October sky

  

I guess I don't mind October. It's usually "seasonably" warm, and we get some sunny days with fall-blue skies that you don't see any other time of year. This October has seemed a bit rainy, though, and the warm, sun-filled days have seemed few and far between. Yesterday we had one and Kevin, Oliver and I got out into the garden to dig up the last of the beets and carrots. It felt wonderful to be out of doors. But, the recent windy rains have stripped much of the color from the trees and the grey skies we've had look like November to me. I'm sorry I can't enjoy you more, October. But, you're just far too close to winter.

Frost on the pumpkin

We got our first frost this week. Not a "hard frost" as they say, but certainly a cooooooooooold morning and some frost on the ground. It's been a lovely October so far, the colors have come to the trees in good measure and I can't help but admire the landscape on a sunny day. I just try hard to enjoy each clear, crisp morning and not think about the grey skies of November.

Funny thing about "frost on the pumpkin" as a phrase. I've often heard it said and it used it myself quite a bit. Turns out it comes from a poem and the phrase in the poem is "When the frost is on the punkin" with pumpkin misspelled. I find it ironic since "punkin" is a misspelling I've had to call people out on in the past.

Here's a bit more from the poem by James Whitcomb Riley:

They's something kindo' harty-like about the atmusfere

When the heat of summer's over and the coolin' fall is here—

Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,

And the mumble of the hummin'-birds and buzzin' of the bees;

But the air's so appetizin'; and the landscape through the haze

Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days

Is a pictur' that no painter has the colorin' to mock—

When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

Pondering on frost conditions also made me think about the difference between hard frost and light frost. I knew there was a difference, but wasn't sure what. Well, a quick google turns up that a hard frost brings both the air and the soil below freezing. This distinction is important in gardening because some plants can withstand a light frost, but will die off in a hard frost.

Fall Crops

As fall moves along, we spend much less time in the gardens, and it makes me sad. We still get outside but it's usually for hikes or to orchards for fall festivals. Our backyard becomes a lonely place, although it's probably just my imagination that makes it so. In fact, there are still vegetables in the garden and work to be done. A week or so ago I picked all the last squash - butternut this year. I'll make soup with it, most likely. And, we've got another great crop of carrots, also a winter soup staple. Although the brussel sprouts didn't do well this year, there are still some to be picked and eaten and there are beets left as well. I love that the root crops extend the vegetable season, but it all makes me think of winter.

Plant Swap!

Last year we started a new gardening tradition: a plant swap party. At the end of the summer we invite people over for a barbecue and ask them to bring a plant or plants from their garden to share and then we all swap. We started it in part because we had too many irises and needed to split up some crowns. But, the party is fun too and we enjoy showing people around the gardens. It's a pretty neat idea and we've gotten some really interesting and lovely plants from people. One of my favorites is Lady's Mantle which is a low-growing flower with sectioned leaves that catch the rain or dew and make them sparkle. The plant is unusual, and I love the feathery, light-yellow flowers it puts out.

This year we had bad luck with the weather - cold and rainy. But Kevin dug up our plants anyway and we had our glasses of wine on the front porch. My prize for this year is some purple coneflower donated by my friend Lynne. We didn't have any and I've always wanted some. This year we gave away a lot of tall phlox, thinning out most of our flower beds. This will be good for the plants and give us room in the gardens to space things out and show off the lower growing plants like the mini-daylilies we bought this year.

I'm sad that fall has arrived, but this is a nice end-of-season tradition. It gives me something to look forward to in the spring.

End of August

We got this catmint from a neighbor. She wasn't kidding when she said it would take over.

Say it ain't so, summer. How can it be the end of August already? I do love Fall, but as I get older Winter becomes more and more depressing to me. And so these late summer days are incredibly bittersweet. We've had a lovely summer, full of warm sunny days and just enough rain to keep everyone happy. The gardens have achieved a blowsy, over-grown state that almost defies weeding. At this point I just let the vegetable garden go --- not that we were ever terribly diligent about the weeds! And the flower beds are so full that the weeds almost can't compete. The phlox are still trying to show off, and the black eyed susans are everywhere. The obedient plants are about to get into the act, though, and they've spread so far that soon they will be the dominant bloom. Oddly enough the hydrangea bush just produced a couple of flowers, and I'm not sure what to make of that. I guess they don't want summer to end, either, and think that we could fool it into thinking it's June with a couple of crazy blue blooms. I'm going along with it.

Turnips?

Planting the vegetable garden this spring was a bit of a scramble. With Oliver's two-year-old "help," we had to get a little creative sometimes in keeping him occupied and getting things in the ground. This has manifested itself in the nearly grown garding in quite a few ways. For one thing, there are random sunflowers in several spots throughout the garden. And, most rows have "walk-throughs" where the seedlings just weren't tough enough to survive Oliver's wandering.  The funniest thing, though is that we planted a lot of things that I couldn't remember planting. We have what I think are delicata variety summer squash, but I'm just not sure that's what they are. And this week I realized that we must have put in some odd varieties of beets. Seeing some non-beetlike greens early on, I had assumed they were swiss chard and happily eaten the greens several times. Then, I noticed the bulbs. Huh. That's not swisschard. So, I asked my sister and she said maybe they were turnips! Ah, turnips. I don't remember planting turnips, but whatever. I dug a few up (what the heck do you do with turnips?) and peeled them and oven roasted them. Kevin and I cut into a few on Sunday night ... and ... they tasted like beets. Delicious. And I'm pretty sure that's what they are. I think.

Heat wave

I love Black-Eyed Susans.

We're in the midst of a string of super-hot and muggy days and I'm hoping it encourages our tiny tomato plants to beef up a little. The vegetable garden looks good, but we started with some pretty runty tomatoes and they're not making much headway. It's discouraging to me because fresh tomato sandwiches are one of my favorite garden foods. But, we may have to buy them this year. Another goof we made was to buy pole beans rather than bush beans and, while they look great, we need to figure out a way to let them climb. The bee balm and black-eyed-susans are starting to bloom and so the gardens are beginning to show their colors. The black caps are ripening and Oliver has eaten all of them right off the bush, none have made it to the house. But, the blackberries will provide more than enough for canning! Ah summer, I wish it lasted longer.

June Berries

June has got to be my favorite month. Winter is a distant memory and summer stretches out ahead of you like an inviting back road. We've been busy with life, and I haven't posted much, but the gardens don't really wait for you and they've grown and --- of course --- gotten a little bit ahead of us. Our small strawberry patch did well this year and now the black raspberries are coming in. From the looks of the blackberry bushes, we're going to be busy picking those soon, too! Even the blueberry bushes look good, two of the four have a fair number of berries for their first year in our yard! It wasn't a great year for iris blooms, but this variety did well. They smell like grape soda to me and are fragrant enough to fill the yard with the scent. We put the vegetable garden in Memorial Day Weekend as we always do and everything seems to be doing well. Now if we can just find some time to weed.

April Snows Bring May Frosts

Taylor Park

Well, the snow is gone. But we've had a couple of weeks of cold weather, even some snow and sleet. It's discouraging because I'm itching to get out in the gardens and do some work. One unexpectedly nice side-effect of the cold weather had been an extra-long bloom time on the tulips. It's as though the flowers are reluctant to take off their coats. The spring plants and flowers are doing their best to make the most of the chilly spring. We've got flowers on the blueberry bushes and on the strawberry plants. The bleeding heart is in bloom, and of course the lilacs are out. It's a beautiful time in the gardens and around town where the blooming trees are in full swing. We're eating asparagus from the garden - well, mostly Oliver eats it before we get a chance to. It's time to mulch and think about tilling the vegetable garden. Only a couple of weeks until we can plant. I hope that we've seen the last of the frost. And I'm trying to take a cue from the plants who seem to know that warmer weather can't be far off. I hope they're right.

An Unwelcome Houseguest

Poor, poor tulips.

We just got an enormous dump of heavy, wet snow. Getting a snowstorm like this in late April is disgusting. There's no other word for it. I walked by the tulip bed at the edge of the driveway and I felt like apologizing to them like the snowstorm was some unexpected half-relation-houseguest who showed up during a dinner party and put his dirty feet on the table and dropped cigarette ash into the soup.

I woke in the night to sounds of tree limbs cracking and falling, and by morning we had lost and regained our power several times. Overall we got 12-14 inches of snow although it's hard to say just how much because the snow is so heavy with water that it packed itself down as it fell. The damage to the trees has been phenomenal. Many had leafed out significantly and the leaves caught the snow beautifully. But watching it pile up, I had an impending sense of doom that was realized in the morning when the snowbanks were littered with maple branches, flowering crabapple trees and other early green.

Spring Sputters

Yesterday we got out in the yard and spent most of the day weeding, transplanting and cleaning up. It felt wonderful! I guess I like yardwork more than your average person. Kevin planted some garlic his parents gave us, I dug dandelions out of the strawberry patch, and we moved several aging or crowded plants to new locations. Because we removed a tree last year, we have a newly extended area in one flower bed. I had Kevin split a chunk of tall phlox --- they were too tough for me to cut through --- and I moved them into the new spot. In front, I planted some new lillies given to us by my co-worker. Next, I moved in some creeping phlox and a little bit of bee balm that I'd accidentally weeded out of somewhere else. Not the most well-planned garden, but I think it might actually turn out OK. All in all the gardens are starting to look quite nice. The recent sunshine and seasonable temperatures have encouraged the tulips to bloom and everything is beginning to jump up. We mowed for the first time yesterday, too, and the sounds and the smell were like a comforting hand on my shoulder. Spring may still sputter a bit but winter sure is over!

Oliver and the Seedlings

The seeds Oliver and I planted have sprouted and we look at them every day, watching their slow progress. Oliver likes to help water them but I must say that it's caused a couple of disasters. He likes to rearrange the pots in the bay window, and his complicated reorganization of the containers sometimes leads to droppage. We've cleaned up quite a bit of dirt. But .... I keep saying to myself that the seedlings that survive Oliver are likely to be more resilient than those that don't. We got more seedlings when we visited the Farr's recently --- they had too many young herbs for their overflowing greenhouse so we stuffed a bunch into baggies to bring home. They survived the car trip and the transplant and seem to be doing nicely - we've now got a ton of basil, chives, sage, cilantro and parsely. We even got a few tomato plants. They look pretty rough right now, sort of like the abused refugees that they are, but I think they'll be all right in the end. With our own cucumber seeds germinated, some dill, and more basil ... we just need to plant a few more vegetables to be well on our way.

Visiting the Farr Farm

vinca

My sister-in-law and her husband have a greenhouse business in upstate New York. We visited recently and got to see their greenhouse in its early glory. They've got an amazing jump on things and I was thrilled to walk through up and down the warm and humid rows, looking at the flowers, herbs, vegetables and berries. We looked at the raspberries and strawberries they have in greenhouses separate from the vegetables and flowers and, while we were there, they were taking in loads of sand and topsoil to raise the ground level so it wouldn't be so wet. Soon they'll be planting their vegetable garden inside and from the looks of their cucumber plants in pots, they'll be eating fresh salad sometime in May. I love visiting their small farm, they've always got projects going on and the ambition of their plans never fails to encourage me to get home and work in the outdoors.

Seed Time

Last week Oliver and I planted some seeds to get them started indoors in hopes of getting a jump on the growing season. He's only two but he was pretty helpful with planting, covering, tamping and watering the seeds. I can't wait until the seedlings start to pop up and he can see them growing. I'm eager to see if he'll understand and to see if he's as fascinated as I am with their growth and progress each day.

Warm Weather

We just experienced some record temps for April - hitting 70 and 80 for a couple of days. It felt wonderful, but weird at the same time. In just a couple of days the change to the trees, grass and gardens was amazing. Of course, it can't last, but it's a sign of things to come and I for one cannot wait. Here's a picture my brother took that sums up the blue-sky, bud-bursting weather we've had.

Marching Along

I always say you can't trust March. We've had some incredibly warm weather, days when even I was outside in short sleeves. Kevin raked out all the gardens and the backyard was drying up admirably. And then, of course, we got some more snow. And this morning, it's a disgusting 10 degrees out. These are the cold snaps that really frost my tulips --- literally. But it can't last and I know that we'll have warmer weather soon. We're seeing tulips, daffodils, narcissus, and have six or eight crocuses in bloom. Oliver likes to get down on his knees and count them ... and so do I. It's a count-up to spring. A countdown to summer.

Hello Tulips!

Our first spring bulbs have made an appearance. We've had  an unusually warm spring with very little snow and so the tulips and crocuses in the front gardens poked their heads up a couple of weeks ago. I love to check their progress every day, once on my way to work and again when I get home. I can't really describe the feeling of happy encouragement I get from the sight of these green shoots. It's a sign that --- no matter how cold and dreary or how wet and muddy or how short the days --- spring is coming. And there's no stopping it. This year, Oliver is old enough to understand what I'm showing him and he's learning to recognize the growing plants. "Hello Tulips!" he likes to call out and I laugh out loud because his joy so closely mirrors my own.

Whatever Gets You Through The Night

January might seem like an odd month to be thinking about gardening, but the thought of all those bulbs sleeping under their cold white blankets and what they'll look like when spring comes helps to get me through these long, dark days.

The first seed catalog came in the mail this month and it seemed like a sign from the gods. So, despite the foot of snow that was recently dumped on us, and despite the fact that the weatherman keeps saying things like "arctic blast," "cyclonic airflow," and "wintry conditions," I know there's hope.

In January I like to think of our gardens as opera singers on winter holiday. They spend all summer on glorious display and take the winter to rest and recuperate. I can't imagine any joy in being frozen and cold, so I prefer to think that they're in some humid climate somewhere, with the sun shining and the bees buzzing.

Wish you were here.